


One Word

by standalone



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Massage, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 07:41:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5282447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look, Enjolras," Courf says, "everyone thinks their masseuse is in love with them. Comes with the territory. We don't want to think we're letting just anyone touch us, so we make it personal.”</p><p>“So I'm wrong?” It's almost a relief. Just a trick of the brain, her body conspiring to convince her that touch equals affection.</p><p>“Now wait,” he says. “I didn't say that.”</p><p>“You said everyone thinks their masseuse loves them.”</p><p>“Yeah, but not everyone's wrong.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Word

**Author's Note:**

> I attribute the presence of any and all emotions in this story to [werebear](http://archiveofourown.org/users/werebear/profile). Thanks for the beta reads!

“Hey, sweetie,” says the heavily pierced and tattooed woman at the front desk, and Enjolras, who usually flinches away from endearments, is surprised to find herself borderline charmed by the greeting. It’s not the reception she expects in this part of town. “You got an appointment?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says. “My roommate called it in. 2 p.m. with someone named... I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten.” She digs in her bag for her phone, because she’s certain Courfeyrac put it in her calendar.

“No problem. You must be Enjolras.” She checks the muted wall clock in the lobby and lifts an eyebrow. “You’re very punctual. Come with me.”

_ When Courfeyrac told her about the appointment, which he’d set up without asking Enjolras (who would, if asked, have responded with an unqualified no), he said he’d had no choice: if she didn’t loosen the fuck up soon she was going to break something. Still, when Enjolras heard the location, an edgy little day spa near the arts college Courf went to, she almost refused on principle. She’s a public figure. She shouldn’t be seen ducking into sordid massage parlors. _

The desk-person, who introduces herself as Eponine, shows Enjolras to a calm, shuttered room in the back. There's tranquil piano music and actual birds singing outside. The room smells vaguely like an herb garden. 

“ _I know, I know, you probably think it's scuzzy,” Courfeyrac said, anticipating her objections, “and okay, the people who work there live harder than you do, but come on, who doesn't? and anyway, you think I don’t know you? The place is sparkling. It's all natural oils and sustainable cotton. I booked you a session with my favorite masseuse. You're gonna love her.”_

“Take off your clothes to whatever degree you're comfortable,” Eponine says, indicating the hooks and hangers on one wall, “and lie face-down under the sheet. Grantaire will knock in a few minutes to see if you're ready.”

Enjolras is very comfortable naked because having a body is a normal and good thing; she hangs her jeans, bra, and blouse, tucking the underpants into a pocket of the jeans because underwear are a little personal, and her glasses into the other because if she is correctly interpreting how her head’s supposed to fit into this table, she will almost certainly crush them. Sliding her flats under a chair, she shimmies into the soft, warm sheets on the massage table. A moment later, the tap comes on the door. She’s ready.

Her masseuse enters so quietly that Enjolras’s first hint she’s there is a vague hodgepodge of smells: stale tobacco and linseed oil and some kind of fruit—maybe apricots? Enjolras doesn’t know why, but something in those smells makes her insides clench. It’s not quite pleasant, but it’s provocative.

The second hint is the hands that spread lightly across the sheet where it covers Enjolras's shoulderblades. The masseuse’s gentle touch belies her voice, which is raspy and rough, and which sends ticklish tremors into Enjolras’s back through each hovering fingertip. “Hey, I’m Grantaire, or you can just call me R. I’m gonna give you a massage. How do you like it?”

“I don't know,” Enjolras confesses. “I don't usually like being touched.” 

Grantaire chuckles. It's a warm, low sound. “A challenge, then. Pressure preference?” 

“Medium-firm?” Enjolras hazards. 

“I'll give it a try,” says Grantaire. “You want different, you say it.”

She lifts her hands, and a sudden wash of yearning crests across Enjolras’s shoulders. The nerve endings are like hair that’s been statically charged and now stretch upward for the rubber balloon that made them this way.  _ The current _ , Enjolras thinks nonsensically.  _ It’s in her.  _

Grantaire’s voice is even electric. It crackles. “House lotion okay?” 

“Sure,” says Enjolras, who always refuses scented lotions, because Courf has been right about this place so far, and all the smells have been soothing or invigorating, not the artificial irritations she would have expected. 

The room fills with the sweet tang of lavender and lemon verbena as Grantaire rubs her hands together. Then she lays a hand on the back of Enjolras's neck, and Enjolras is ready to take back everything she ever said about being touched.

It's the lightness. It's almost a memory of touch, but also a harbinger of touch to come. The pressure increases so gradually, with such subtle deepening, that Enjolras is completely taken aback by her own sigh when the long press of Grantaire’s thumb sinks subtly toward the vertabrae in her neck.

Each pull of Grantaire’s strong hands drags Enjolras from her mind and back into herself. When she tells Enjolras to roll onto her back and scoot down a bit, Enjolras complies as if in a dream.

She works over every bit of Enjolras slowly, skilfully pushing apart knots Enjolras hadn't noticed till they untangled and stretched smooth under Grantaire's touch, like subterranean rivers reshaping their muddy courses under the hands of a devoted god.

Time passes in majestic, meandering waterways of sensation; from some ancient recess of her brain, the phrase  _ thou by the Indian Ganges’ side shouldst rubies find _ drifts siltily past, and disappears in the slow undulating tug of Enjolras’s calf muscles coming undone. 

Much later (she’s pretty sure), she comes to fuller consciousness again when Grantaire's hands clamp, one at a time, along the long sides of her neck. Enjolras is melting. You're not supposed to  _ do _ this to someone, she thinks. It feels deeply wrong. It hurts and it doesn't; it's terrifying to let someone hold her like this; it's captivating. She knows this is all flickering in her face.

“Is it too hard?'' Grantaire asks.

“Maybe a little?” Enjolras admits. “But it feels so good.” She doesn't care if this makes her sound like a masochist. She doesn't care about anything but the hands that grip her throat, the tingle of crushed mint in her nose, the discordant puff of Grantaire's scorched exhales on her forehead.

At the end—because it ends, it ends, everything ends, even when you’re pretty sure time itself has yielded to the inexorable continuum of these hands on your body—after Grantaire has said “Thanks, get up whenever,” which she is going to go ahead and take to mean she can wait to get up until the distant day when she feels ready to face life again, she keeps her eyes closed, reveling in the soft warm table and the comfort that seems to pulse through her, till after she's heard the door click lightly shut. Then she opens her eyes to the empty room. She stretches lengthily and dresses.

She leaves feeling that she's been touched everywhere and also that she will never be able to get enough. It's only then that she realizes she never saw Grantaire's face.

*

It’s many weeks later, in the aftermath of a hellish culmination of a city-wide campaign in the office and the morning after a terrible ABC meeting in which, she cringes to recall, she referred to Combeferre as an “automaton,” Cosette as a “pushover,” and Marius as a “barnacle,” that Enjolras reluctantly accepts that maybe she should start to be a person who gets massages. Eponine seems genuine in her recollection of Enjolras, and is happy to fit her into the afternoon’s schedule.

A couple of art students look irritatingly at home loitering outside the spa’s front door, but if asked, Enjolras could only describe one. She’s the broad-featured woman with brown skin and thick, dark curls pulled back in a messy knot who leans against the brick wall beside the building’s entrance, and there’s something arresting in the way her eyes meet Enjolras’s—an insouciant flash of a glance that feels like a mockery, like the challenge no one ever sends Enjolras’s way:  _ You got a problem, pretty girl? _ She's in jeans and a band T with the sleeves hacked off; her arms writhe with tattoos. A few spatters of green paint mar one of the designs on her muscled forearm, which is in the process of lifting a slender smoke to her lips.

Enjolras is about to push open the glass door to the studio, but she can’t walk in without saying something. “Excuse me,” she says in what Courf always calls the  _ I’m-not-here-to-make-friends voice _ . “Are you aware that you’re  _ right  _ outside a place of business?” The whole city has no-smoking ordinances. Even this scruffy art student has to know that.

“Where the hell you think you are, princess?” demands her skinny friend from where he’s lounging on the edge of a concrete planter. “Maybe you better get your ass back to—”

“Uh, yeah,” the paint-spattered woman interrupts heavily, dragging dark eyes from the phone her other friend’s holding in front of her to lock back on Enjolras. “I am aware that this a place of business.” She exhales a breath of minty air. “Sorry, babe, you can’t save the world from me today. Just a vape.”

Enjolras isn’t sure which to tackle first: the “babe,” or the idea that vaping doesn’t also glamorize addiction to the products of some of the worst corporations in the world. Instead, she gets caught out gawping when the woman asks, in a gravelly voice that really seems too direct to curl the way it does in Enjolras’s belly, “Shouldn’t you be getting undressed?”  

Enjolras goes bright red, she’s sure; her skin shows everything. It would be much easier to find a retort if that woman wasn’t still staring at her, black-glass eyes looking through Enjolras’s clothes, she knows, as if they can see what’s underneath. One narrow lock of her hair’s dyed bright blue, like a college kid, but on closer study, Enjolras sees that these people, like her, are probably many years removed from college. “What are you implying?” Enjolras asks, befuddled and irate.

“It’s almost three.” The woman hands the vaporizer off to her snickering friend and nods toward the door of the studio. “See you in there?”

Oh, crap.

*

“I am so sorry,” Enjolras says the second she smells Grantaire enter the massage room, grateful that she’s face-down on the cushioned table and doesn’t have to look at Grantaire for this exchange. “I was rude to you outside.”

““Hey, I’m Grantaire,” Grantaire says, and the first contact of her fingertips is as weighty with promise as last time, “and I’m gonna give you a massage. And we’re not gonna talk about bullshit.”

“Okay,” Enjolras agrees immediately, relieved to be let off the hook so easily. “Are you a painter?”

“Among other things,” Grantaire grunts, thumbs sliding in introductory furrows down the sides of Enjolras’s spine. “But we’re not talking about bullshit.”

Enjolras takes this to mean that they are not talking. She shuts up and tries to focus on not arching into every new touch of Grantaire’s hands. She doesn’t want to make this gross. She  _ won’t _ . But it’s not fair: even without meaning to be, Grantaire is a sensual Midas; everything she touches shivers with joy.

*

They continue to not talk about bullshit, or anything else, but every time—and there are many—Enjolras finds herself lost further in the labyrinth of Grantaire’s touch; every time, the parts of her life that occur outside of Grantaire’s hands lose a layer of luster; and every time, she becomes a little more convinced that you cannot so completely adore another person’s flesh without adoring the person too. It just makes sense.

The quiet is strange. Embarrassing as it may be to admit, her sixty-minute sessions with Grantaire are probably the only silent moments in her waking life. She is an unapologetic—and usually impressive—talker, but in Grantaire’s presence, on the table, she shuts up and communes with Grantaire’s hands. Is it any wonder, then, that she begins to imagine that they talk to her? that they tap her nerves like typewriter keys, coding in message after message across the long plains of Enjolras’s skin?

Except that maybe Enjolras’s decoder’s broken, because the message she receives, over and over—the message that she can’t quite prevent herself from writing back to, over and over, encrypted in twitching muscles and too-fast breathing—pressed into her cheeks and forearms and toes, is  _ This part here: it’s beautiful; I want it. _

*

She can't talk about it with Combeferre, of course, because honestly, she'd rather set herself on fire than talk to Combeferre about romance. 'Ferre dates a little, but she has always made it definitively clear that she is  _ not _ talking about it with Enjolras or Courfeyrac or any of the others, no way, she needs some boundaries and this is an important one.

“It must be hard being the only straight one,” Jehan suggested once.

“ Nah,” Courfeyrac said, “it's not about  _ who  _ she's fucking, it's that she's  _ fucking  _ at all. Combeferre would rather we thought she was a brain in a jar. She doesn't want us to know she's fully human, with fully human urges.”

Then he pulled Jehan into his lap and they made out a little bit for basically everyone's benefit, because Courfeyrac cannot acknowledge urges without  _ acknowledging urges _ .

That's why Enjolras corners Courf in the kitchen after her fifth massage.

He's fixing dinner—ratatouille, she thinks, from the mish-mash of cubed vegetables on the counter—which means he'll be a little distracted, which is the best time to talk to him about a sensitive topic you hope he'll forget by morning.

Enjolras gets them both a beer and settles on the far side of the counter. It's better for everyone if she stays away from the stovetop.

“Your masseuse,” she starts.

“R?”

“Yeah. She... Well, I've gone to her a few times now.”

“Ha!” Courfeyrac jabs his wooden spatula in the air in victory. “Told you you'd love her.”

“That's the thing. She's great, but...” She really doesn't know how to phrase this. “There's something about the way she touches me, that, well...”

“Is it a pressure thing? She's really good at adapting, you just have to tell her what you like. Like, when I had that thing with my shoulder, I swear, it's like magic how, it’s like she barely touches you, but she gets the fuck up in your physiognomy, if you know what I mean, and fixes you.”

“No, the pressure's great.”

“Is it emotional, then? Because sometimes a good massage just gets you in the gut. Totally normal, just a thing that happens; someone digs a knuckle in the flesh of your butt and you're suddenly crying about your doomed marriage prospects. Not weird at all.”

“No.” She feels flushed. She takes a hearty swig of beer, then has to gulp down the foam that ensues when she sets it down too hard. “I mean, not exactly?”

“ Aha!” Courfeyrac exclaims, dumping eggplant cubes into his sizzling pan; he turns to smirk at her. “I know exactly what your problem is.” Fuck. The look says he  _ does _ . “You think she's in love with you, don't you?”

“ Um. Well. Not in  _ love _ , exactly,” she dissembles, but he sees right through her.

“Look, Enjolras, totally normal. Everyone thinks their masseuse is in love with them. Comes with the territory. We don't want to think we're letting just anyone touch us, so we make it personal.”

“So I'm wrong?” It's almost a relief. Just a trick of the brain, her body conspiring to convince her that touch equals affection.

“Now wait,” he says, flipping the browning eggplant. “I didn't say that.”

“You said everyone thinks their masseuse loves them.”

“Yeah, but not everyone's wrong.”

*

On the eighth visit, Enjolras, who is finding that the no-talking-about-bullshit policy makes it hard to drop hints, just leaves a note next to her water glass and the lotions on the little table in the room. The note is not subtle.

Grantaire gives no indication of having read it. The massage proceeds the same as always; the only difference seems to be the oil she's using, which doesn't have the sharp, fresh fragrance Enjolras has come to associate with Grantaire's massages.

When Grantaire folds the sheet triangularly back to expose one leg, Enjolras can't help but shiver. “Easy,” Grantaire cautions, and goes to work on her glutes. After one leg, she re-folds the sheet to reveal the other. Enjolras loves the long slow drag of Grantaire's knuckles down the length of her thighs and calves, the way the exquisite pressure of those thumbs on the soles of her feet makes orange fireworks pop behind her closed eyelids. When Grantaire's worked her way up to the other hip, Enjolras waits for her to fold the sheet back over. The familiar weight of it is a signal that Grantaire is about to have her turn to her back.

But the sheet stays folded; her leg is still exposed.

Grantaire stills, one hand pressed gently against the side of Enjolras's ass.

“ You say  _ one word _ ,” she whispers harshly, “and I stop.”

Enjolras trembles. Is it a warning or a promise? Maybe both.

Both hands are on her again. They knead at the smooth skin of Enjolras's cheek, pushing deeper to the tender muscles below. A thumb slips into the crease where ass becomes leg. Enjolras gulps. The whole hand follows, sliding between the legs. She's working the inside of Enjolras's thighs now—she's crossed the invisible lines that, for her, must clearly demarcate the touchable and nontouchable regions of the body. Grantaire's touch is firm and steady; Enjolras imagines that the breathing is too, but she can't hear over the pounding of her own blood in her throat.

She always leaves these sessions aroused. It's no surprise that she is now; it's all she can do not to rub against the organic-cotton mattress under her as Grantaire's fingers slide into deep and secret muscles in her upper thighs, muscles she didn't know she had. She gasps for breath, because it feels so good; she wants to tell Grantaire—

“One word,” Grantaire says again, voice almost inaudible but thick with caution. At the same time, her hands run higher up the inside of Enjolras's legs, and then, oh god, they've crossed another of the invisible markings and are gently pushing Enjolras apart. The sheet has tumbled further to the side; cool air drifts across her cunt. 

Enjolras bites her lip. Her breath is fast. She is not good at being quiet.

(Sex isn't exactly a mystery to Enjolras. She's had some before, with men and with women, and it has been just fine. But it always seems a little slow and messy; why spend all that time when she can get herself off in a tidy minute and get back to the million other things? That minute, though, tends to be a little noisy. It's not untrue that, as more than one critic has observed, she loves the sound of her own voice; the people who say it about her, though, are—she fervently hopes—not thinking it applies to the bedroom too.)

She feels her nakedness so acutely. She knows she is swollen and eager, but Grantaire is just holding her, not moving, hands like vises on her yearning ass.

Then, suddenly, there's a touch. One finger, gentle, soft, drifting along the length of her lips. Her hips jolt into it. It's amazing. It's so little and so much. She can't really move, though; the other hand pins her fast.

“One word,” Grantaire whispers again, like it’s becoming a mantra, and slides two fingers inside.

She is slick and ready, and  _ good god, this is happening _ .

Just like Grantaire's touch everywhere, Grantaire's fingers inside her start soft and mysteriously acquire strength till the pressure is overwhelming, almost uncomfortably good. Enjolras thrashes her head to the side, snaps teeth into the soft terry cover of the headrest so that she won't cry out. Her hands clutch at the mattress.

She doesn't realize she's been grinding into the soft bed until Grantaire moves the hand that's been holding Enjolras—she slides it over Enjolras’s side, past the hip-bone till it’s down under the pelvis, to give her something to grind against. It's incredible; the firm pressure growing inside her; the soft thumb bumping her clit; the hardness of a forearm and palm below her, grounding her. 

With exquisite determination, Grantaire's fingers spread wide and wider inside her—they are pressing her open, so wide and so good, and the gentle thumb suddenly turns solid, and then Enjolras is coming. 

And coming.

She tries very very hard not to make noise, but she knows she's wriggling against the table—Grantaire pulls the arm from below her and, even as her right hand keeps working the last of Enjolras's orgasm, the other spans her back, holds her in place, resistant and reassuring.

(And she’s  _ still  _ coming. God, it’s almost embarrassing how long she feels the climax sparkling through her; she ought to be done now, oughtn’t she? She’s had entire jack-off sessions that were faster than this orgasm. She’s got to tell Grantaire the Midas thing. If they ever talk, that is. If they’re ever in a situation that’s not just touching, that’s more than hands on flesh, that actually involves looking at each other’s faces—can she even picture R’s face? she wonders guiltily, riding her strong hands, and realizes with a pleased surge of  _ holy hell seriously even  _ more _ of this? _ that she can, perfectly: the dark eyes, flared brows, the electric-blue streak in the untidy mass of black curls.  _ Oh wow, those curls.  _ Despite her best efforts, one moan slips out.)

Finally, Enjolras pants through the last wave of sensation and unclenches her teeth from the cushioned headrest—she is sure they leave marks, but she can’t give this any attention, because at that same moment, Grantaire slips her fingers out and lets go. The absence of touch is, as always, a little jarring. Still, Enjolras is starry-eyed and glowing and warm and every post-sex cliché.

It sounds like Grantaire is wiping her hands clean on one of the towels from the towel-warmer.

Enjolras stares blindly at the wall, waiting and reveling, while the explosions inside her fade to a rosy blush. Everything is so good, so perfect. She gropes for something to say.

“R,” she starts. It’s the first time she’s been bold enough to try the nickname.

There's no answer. She didn't hear Grantaire leave the room.

After a lot of internal dissent, Enjolras decides not to try to track Grantaire down. The voice that says  _ Clearly she doesn’t want to talk _ overrides the voice saying  _ This magic cannot end so abruptly _ . She makes sure to leave the exact same tip as usual, schedules her next visit, and hopes Eponine just chalks the flush in her cheeks up to ordinary post-massage bliss.

*

The next time is the same, except maybe better, because of the anticipation, the wondering throughout the first forty minutes of mindblowing massage— _ will it happen again? Can it? Is it possible that the whole glorious thing was a fantasy that I conjured in my mind, and that I’m only imagining the ways her fingers are lingering in the tenderest hollows of my ribs? _ But it happens again, this time with two thumbs opening her up from behind, sliding in just enough to caress the sides of her inner walls. Until this moment, Enjolras did not know she could come without direct clitoral stimulation. She also didn’t know she could come again, while the first wave of spasms still echoed through her, from a single finger, light as a whisper, against her neglected clit while those thumbs held her immobile from within.

After the third such visit, and the third time Enjolras—who really is completely useless in the moments directly after sex—attempts to talk to a Grantaire who’s already left the room, Enjolras decides it’s time to do something about it.

When she asks after Grantaire on the way out, Eponine says, “She's in a session. You can leave a note?” There's a stack of rough squares of scratch paper chopped from old concert fliers. Enjolras takes one up, but isn't sure what to say.

She writes her name and phone number. And email address. And the ABC website. By now, it's feeling like a goddamned business card, so she starts over on a new scrap. 

Name. Phone number.  _ Please call. _

*

Three days later, she's eating with Courfeyrac—it’s her night to supply dinner, so they're having take-out Thai—when her phone buzzes with a text.

** It's Grantaire. You said call you? But I'm stupid on phone **

She drops her tub of curry.

“It's her?!” squeals Courfeyrac. He thumps the table. “What's she say?”

“Shhh,” hisses Enjolras, squinting at the phone.

“ Don't you shush me, Enj. It's a  _ text _ .”

“Shh!” she says again, hand raised so she can focus on the boggling little screen. “What do I say?” she demands.

“ I don't know. What did  _ she _ say?”

Enjolras snaps out of it and passes over her phone.

“Do you want to sound like you like her or like you're a dick?”

“Why would I want to sound like a dick?”

“Right.” Courfeyrac sounds like he’s laughing at her, which is unaccountable but irrelevant. “You're Enjolras, so you say thanks.”

She is no good with her thumbs; pecking out the reply takes too long, especially since she keeps getting flustered and having to backspace. 

** Thanks for texting. I want to ask you out. Is that okay? **

The reply doesn’t come for four hours. Enjolras is brushing her teeth for bed when the phone buzzes on her nightstand.

** Ok **

Enjolras wants to ask Courfeyrac whether she should text back now, but it's Friday night and Courf's out drinking with Jehan and Bahorel.

It's Friday night. Tomorrow's the weekend.

** Do you work tomorrow? **

** Early shift, off at 3 **

** Corinthe at 4? **

She goes to bed with no reply, but at 8 the next morning, the text wakes her up.

** I’ll be in the back **

*

The Corinthe is a crappy little bar a block up from the massage studio where Grantaire works. It's always packed with art students and grads who never quite peeled away from the campus neighborhood, downing cheap beer and yelling about video installations and performance art. Courfeyrac drags Enjolras there every few months as part of his destressing-the-roomie regimen, so she knows it well. 

The bar's saving grace is its little back terrace. After dark, it’s a nightly Nuisance Citation in the making, but in the afternoons, it’s peaceful and green with ferny growth climbing the brick walls and only a half-dozen other occupants, mostly squinting at laptops in the filtered sunlight.

Grantaire is sitting in a corner at a rickety cast-iron table. Her arms bar her chest and she’s glaring skyward at something that may not actually exist.

“Hi,” ventures Enjolras, drawing up a chair with a screech of metal on brick. 

Grantaire startles to attention. “Hey.” She sits straighter. “Hi. Come on, sit down.”

Enjolras has barely settled in when a server, tall and narrow in impossibly skinny checked pants, a doge-print T, and flowered vest, bearing a tray that teeters with used glasses and bottles, leans over them.

“Jehan?” Enjolras exclaims. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“ On and off,” Jehan shrugs. “ _ I  _ didn’t know you guys knew each other.”

Neither Enjolras nor Grantaire really knows how to respond to this. Fortunately, Jehan slices through the growing silence. “Usual, R?”

“Uh, yeah,” she says, looking distracted. “Thanks, Jehan. And she’ll have...”

“Sparkling water?” asks Enjolras, who really ought to be better prepared with a drink order. 

“You got it.” Jehan pivots neatly on one foot and vanishes back inside, tray uncannily steady in his upraised hand.

Enjolras looks back at Grantaire. Her face is fascinating; if she hadn’t accepted Enjolras’s invitation, and if she hadn’t already, of her own volition, brought Enjolras to sexual ecstasy on multiple occasions, Enjolras would swear that the set of Grantaire’s full lips was one of revulsion. Instead, she can’t help but contrast it with the gleam in Grantaire’s dark eyes.

“You know this is a bar, right?” 

“Yeah?” Enjolras is confused.

“Don’t tell me you don’t drink.”

“No, I do, it’s just ... a little early?”

Jehan appears again with a tall fizzy glass of sparkling water with lime for Enjolras and two bottles of MGD for Grantaire. Oh, shit. 

“Early’s relative,” Grantaire says, hoisting an icy bottle in her hand. “Have one.”

Enjolras’s pause is definitely longer than it should be, but, at the prodding of Courfeyrac’s voice inside her head, she finally accepts the bottle. 

“ _ Salud _ ,” Grantaire offers.

“ _ Salud _ .” They clink bottles and Enjolras—who really doesn’t drink that much, and hasn’t tried a macrobrewed lager since college—is pleasantly surprised to find that this one tastes like basically nothing, and is cold and sparkly enough to suit a sultry afternoon.

“ How do you know Jehan?” Grantaire asks in a voice that clearly says  _ I am trying very hard to talk about bullshit to please you _ . 

“We’re old friends. And he dates my roommate.”

Grantaire’s eyes widen in what is, considering her stolid expression thus far, probably a double-take. “No way. You live with Courf?”

“Since college. He’s one of my best friends.”

“Oh shit.”

“Shit?” Enjolras notes that Grantaire’s looking a little off-kilter.

“Nothing. It’s just ... that guy’s seen me in some pretty unsavory fucking states in the last couple years.” It’s probably the most words she’s heard from Grantaire at once.

“Courfeyrac’s the right person to see you at your worst. I should know.”

“Oh, come on. Your worst is probably, like, forgetting to check if your socks match.”

Enjolras thinks back to some stonily self-righteous confrontations with various ABC members—people to whom she ought to have given infinite leeway—and Courf’s irritating knack for cajoling her back to civility. She thinks back to her high-handed response the first time she laid eyes on Grantaire. “Sure,” she says. “Let’s pretend that’s true.” And Grantaire’s lips, which are really marvelously shapely and broad, tighten briefly, then relax into a smile which breaks whitely through the brown and sepia and bronze of her face.

“You don’t strike me as flawed,” R says, tilting her head as if to better see through Enjolras’s gleaming exterior.

“Appearances are deceptive,” Enjolras shrugs. “It’s messed up. People think good things about me without knowing anything.”

“Based only on the cute glasses and the curls and your statuesque physique. They think you’re a good girl, and,” she catches Enjolras’s eyes with a sudden immediacy that causes a gulp to stick in Enjolras’s throat, “they wonder what it takes to make you moan.”

“Um.” Enjolras looks down because she knows she is blushing. She doesn’t talk much about sex.

“That’s what we’re here to talk about, right?” Grantaire drains her bottle. “So let’s not beat around the bush. You asked me out so you could work through your conflicted feelings about getting HJs from a masseuse, because that probably seems wrong to you, huh?”

Why on earth didn’t Enjolras come prepared for this conversation? “Um. I guess? I mean ...”

“Look, I’ll make it easy on you. I’m down. I don’t give a shit if it’s weird for you—I mean, I looked you up, I know who you are, and I get that you probably don’t want people to know the Mayor’s right-hand woman’s getting fucked by some chick in a massage studio—but it’s not like I’m gonna spill.”

She pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and smacks them down on the table right around the same time as Jehan sweeps through to replace her beer. “Thanks, dude.” She throws back half of it in one go, and Enjolras is still trying to work out what to say when Grantaire continues. “Now, clearly you don’t know shit about me, or you wouldn’t be seen in public with me. I am a mess of a human being, as your friend Courf can attest, and definitely not the company anyone with political aspirations should keep.

“I drink too much, I smoke too much—want one?” Enjolras shakes her head numbly, struggling to pay attention to both the words and the incandescent fury—not at her, she thinks, but at something bigger, at life, at destiny—that rearranges Grantaire’s face like storm systems shift a weather-map into thousands of tiny, concurrent disasters. Grantaire drags deeply on a cigarette and her next words come in a fog of smoke. “I lack professional boundaries. My creative endeavors unsettle people. I live in a shithole, work three jobs, complain a lot, and I only know how to cook bacon and French toast. Also, there’s my criminal record, which is Not Good.”

“I don’t care!” Enjolras finally blurts out. “I really don’t. You seem like someone I want to know. You just make me feel different than other people, in a good way.”

“Oh, come on, Enj, so I’m good with my hands. Just cause your pussy’s into it doesn’t mean you have to be, too.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Enjolras protests.

“Fine then. Tell me about you.”

“It sounds like you know. I’m the City Manager. Before that, I was with a couple grassroots equity organizations, and before that, back in college, I started this progressive activist group that actually still meets a couple times a month, although it’s online now since a bunch of us have moved away.”

“What are you going to do with your life, pretty girl?”

Enjolras bristles at the term. Without meaning to, she draws herself up a little straighter and switches into her professional voice. “After a few more years at the city level, I intend to seek candidacy for state office, then, if all goes to plan, to take office as a US Senator before I hit 40.”

Grantaire curls her lip thoughtfully. “Ambitious.”

“What?” Enjolras is maybe a little too defensive about this, but she’s been taking a lot of shit for her life plan lately. “So I have a plan. What’s wrong with that? Isn’t it better to go after what you want than to just amble through life taking whatever crap it throws at you?”

“ Sure,” Grantaire says amicably, but the sheen in her eyes has gone hard. “Take what you want,  _ mi senadora _ . We aimless peons won’t hold you back.”

Suddenly, Enjolras realizes how personal her words must have sounded. “I didn’t mean to disparage you. I just meant that, well, there are so many people stuck in dead-end jobs when they could do so much more, could be so much more, and we only get one life—I hate to think of anyone wasting theirs being less.”

“ Right. That’s gonna be the title of my biography, by the way:  _ Being Less: The Grantaire Story, in Some Less Slothful Person’s Words _ .” Her cigarette butt hisses from the depths of her now-empty second bottle.

“Shit. I’m sorry. I’m obviously terrible at this.”

“No, we’re obviously just not meant to be here.”

“But I want ...”

“I get what you want, Enjolras. You want to have it all, but you can’t fucking have me.”

“ I don’t want to  _ have _ you,” Enjolras protests. “You’re twisting my words.”

“You take what you want, right?”

“ When I can. But jobs, not  _ people _ .” 

“No one ever says no to you, do they?”

“Of course they do,” she says indignantly.

“Not like this.” 

“No! Not like this. I don’t get it, Grantaire, you’re so smart, and so interesting, why do you have to be so ...”

“What? Obnoxious? Lazy? Rude?”

“Resigned,” she says. She regrets it the second it leaves her mouth, but not enough to stop talking. “Why are you resigned to a life you complain about when you could have so much more?”

“Fuck off,” Grantaire says, and the stark anger of the words is almost worth it for the brilliant flare of feeling behind her eyes. “I think we’re done here.”

She pockets her cigarettes and walks away, leaving a stunned Enjolras staring at her own half-drunk beer in confusion. 

Jehan refuses to let her pay. “It’s a secret barter economy,” he explains, lustrous appreciation underlining his words. “The bars and cafes give each other’s workers free beer and coffee and whatever else costs us nothing, and Eponine at the spa lets our people use the hot tubs after hours, when it costs them nothing. Proletarians united. Unlisted benefit of working on this street."

*

After a week’s dilly-dallying, Enjolras finally goes to the appointment because she didn’t cancel it and now it’s too late to cancel, and it seems weirder to pay  _ not  _ to go than to pay and go. But god, it’s weird. 

““Hey, I’m Grantaire,” R says when she comes in. “I’m gonna give you a massage.” She asks no questions, invites no discussion. The subtext is clear: We are not talking about this.

But the massage is as phenomenal as every other. Maybe more so, even—the deep digs seem to plumb tenderer depths; the explosions fill Enjolras’s brain like an Independence Day pyrospectacular, bang after bang as neurons flare in response to Grantaire’s too-knowing touch.

When Grantaire folds the sheet back and trespasses the invisible boundary inside of Enjolras’s right thigh, it feels like everything Enjolras failed to say at the Corinthe. It feels like reasonless attraction and reasoned reluctance, like passion and want and nervousness masked by competence; it feels like the kind of joy we hardly ever get to see, let alone experience, and because of the circumstances, tragically, it feels like a transgression.

“You don’t have to ...” Enjolras begins, because she knows where this is going, and it feels wrong—so wrong. They practically left their date yelling at each other. She doesn’t want Grantaire to think she owes Enjolras a goddamn thing except for the very legal service for which Enjolras is paying.

“Starting now,” Grantaire cuts her off. “One. Fucking. Word.”

Enjolras comes so hard she tastes blood from biting her lip to keep the screams in. 

*

“I feel like a terrible person,” she tells Courf that night.

“You’re self-centered and self-righteous and far too attractive for someone who’s immune to the charms of physical beauty, but come the fuck on, in what world are you a terrible person?”

“Grantaire hates me and I’m paying her for sex.”

Courfeyrac’s wine goes down the wrong way, and by the time he’s regained his equilibrium, his face has gone as red as the contents of his glass. “What the motherloving fuck?” he demands.

Enjolras tells it all. Courfeyrac listens, slackjawed, completely forgetting the heap of mushrooms he was cleaning. When she’s done, he’s already switched off the stove and grabbed his car keys.

“You need to come with me,” Courf says. “Now.”

Once he’s dragged her out the door, he becomes uncharacteristically unforthcoming. He doesn’t stop talking, of course—it’s not just rumor that the two of them have repurposed ‘Ferre’s chess-clock to ensure voice equity in their more heated conversations—but Enjolras really has no idea what he’s taking her to see.

“I thought it was you!” he exclaims after they’ve gotten out of the car on the edge of the arts college campus, “but I didn’t want to say anything, because it’s kind of weird, right, that you’d be her muse or whatever, and I didn’t want to creep you out because this getting-massages thing is really helping you chill the fuck out. But now I know you’re fucking her, you should see.”

“Her muse?” Enjolras is trying and failing to keep up, literally and metaphorically. She’s a fast walker, but Courfeyrac’s legs are longer, and the campus grounds are expansive.

“Here we go.”

Though the exterior lights are on, spotlighting posters for a show called  _ Theories of Change _ , the Myriel Gallery’s obviously closed for the night. Enjolras is not shocked—honestly, after all these years,  _ should  _ she be surprised that her friends conspire behind her back?—when a minute later, Combeferre pulls up on her first-responder bike beside them.

“I want you to know I don’t do this,” she says gravely to Courfeyrac as he ducks to kiss her cheek. “It may not technically violate the terms of my employ, but neither is it entirely above-board.”

“But it’s for Enjolras!” Courf chirps, using his phone to illuminate the keypad at the locked door. 

“I have no idea what is happening,” Enjolras says.

With a series of numbers and a swipe of her card, ‘Ferre holds open the door. 

“All yours, guys.”

“You’re coming in, right?” Enjolras asks.

“No thanks. In this, I prefer ignorance.”

Courfeyrac leads them into the gallery. It’s one large room divided by several temporary walls. The current exhibition is multi-modal: mobiles hang from the ceiling; an enormous clay figure appears to be clambering its way up through a clay pool in the center of the floor. The walls feature paintings and drawings, pencils and oils and watercolors of all shapes and sizes, but the largest and most prominent piece of work hangs at the back of the main space. 

It’s a collection of dozens of canvases, each no larger than a piece of paper, arranged in a neat grid. Thin lines of wall separate each image from the next, but together, the paintings create the illusion that they’re one giant image. And that image, once Enjolras’s brain puts it together, shakes her core. It’s her. It’s her, face down, from the waist up, naked and stark in ocher and white on a background of avocado-green. Her head’s turned sideways, and nothing in the face makes it obvious, but something about the parts together—the way her neck’s bent, the curve of her lip, the tension in the shoulders—says it’s her.

The panels that show the face and upper back are precise, controlled, much as is their subject matter. In the lower canvases, though, the black lines that separate color from color begin to look hasty and wild, the colors themselves to muddy as if they’re seeking each other out. And honestly, they’re pictures of segments of a person’s lower back, how is it possible that they convey anything but pure anatomy, but these panels show, with the barest hint of motion, a flat-out arching desperate need that Enjolras, looking at them now, knows as well as her tongue knows her crooked incisors.

“See?” Courfeyrac is prancing at her side, watching her watch this. She had forgotten he was there. 

Enjolras just nods. She’s leaning in to see the brushwork, as if the act of verifying the individual strokes will somehow make any of this make sense. The paint’s lumpier in the lower pieces. Long ridges give texture and uncertainty to the shapes there; the ones up top are as flat as reproductions. The progression downward feels liberating. It feels like the moment you let go and start to feel. 

“I don’t think she hates you,” Courf teases in a sing-song voice.

“She’s really good.”

He gives her a look like if she’d just said that ice cream is delicious, or that racism undergirds every regulatory structure of our nation. “Uh, yeah.” 

“I don’t know anything about art.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s irrelevant.”

She gazes at the piece again until Courfeyrac tears her away—it turns out that Grantaire has another on display too. It’s a clay statue of hands, unmistakably Grantaire’s own, squeezing at a helpless blob of clay.

“Guys?” Combeferre calls from the foyer. “I’m officially on duty right now, so I really need to get back to the clinic in case some freshman gets alcohol poisoning or falls out a window.”

Enjolras steals one last look at the painting of her before they leave. The gallery lights switch back off as Combeferre codes the door shut. 

“Got what you wanted?” she asks Courf. “No, wait.” She holds up a hand before Courfeyrac can burble matchmaker ebullience all over her. “Tell me nothing. I’ll see you at ABC, and I’m sure if there’s anything I need to know, it’ll come out there.”

Enjolras is still more or less speechless. Fortunately, Combeferre knows her well enough to just give a hug. Before climbing on her bike again, she hands Enjolras a folded paper. “Didn’t look like you saw these.”

It’s the show brochure. Grantaire’s hands sculpture’s on the front, above the title of the show. Inside is a list of artists and works, and Enjolras digs deep for the restraint to save this reveal, at least, for a moment outside of Courfeyrac’s knowing gaze. She shoves the brochure deep in the back pocket of her jeans.

It’s hours later, at home, after debriefing with Courf through a belated dinner and unhurried washing-up, that Enjolras finally unfolds the brochure in the relative privacy—with Courfeyrac for a roommate, all privacy is relative—of her own bedroom, and scans the credits for Grantaire’s name.

Her sculpture is called “Make Me.” It’s credited to Grantaire, Adjunct Professor, Studio Arts. So those three jobs aren’t all service work, Enjolras supposes. This is the kind of thing she’d know, she thinks, if she were the kind of person who researches her crushes. But would it make a difference? Honestly, she’s not so sure. She reckons all the jobs use those hands, though. Enjolras studies the details in the photo on the front. These hands could make anything.

They can make desire visible. They can make Enjolras weak. 

The paintings are listed in a separate column. Enjolras is suddenly and unreasonably afraid that the set of paintings will be untitled, but she needn’t worry. Nestled between other artists’ pieces called “Autumn Torpor #6” and “cirrus cloud symphony,” there it is: “I Know You Are (But What Am I?)”

Enjolras flops backward on her bed. Courfeyrac is right.  

Isn’t he?

And if he is, and now that she knows, how on earth is she supposed to answer?

*

“One word,” she said, just like every other time. 

Enjolras shudders away. It is good; it is so good; she could get off to Grantaire’s hands in this white room forever, no problem. But that’s not what she came here for, and she only has the room fifteen more minutes.

Her body is weak, already thrusting with absolutely zero autonomy against the hand Grantaire’s pressing against her.

One word.

“Switch,” she says.

Grantaire halts. Enjolras feels the confusion ripple through the room. Switch what? Switch hands? But she likes this... and she’s not supposed to talk...

Enjolras takes advantage of the lull to pull away before her body fucks itself to yet another Grantaire-induced orgasm. The balance is teetering.

“Switch,” she says again. “You, up.”

Grantaire goggles. “No way.”

“Please. Just once?”

“You don’t want this.” In one disparaging shunt of the hand, Grantaire indicates the curves of her stout body.

“I really do.”

“Have you ever?”

“I have.”

“With someone like me?”

_ There’s no one like you _ , Enjolras thinks. “Up,” she says.

And, remarkably, Grantaire follows instructions.

Perhaps Enjolras ought to feel shy or exposed, kneeling naked before the massage table to tug off Grantaire’s canvas shoes, socks, her worn army-surplus pants, but all she feels is excited at each new intimacy: Grantaire’s feet, knobbly and soft; her strong, thick legs; the inviting warmth between them; the way they tremble as Enjolras’s hands shift them gently apart.

Grantaire’s watching Enjolras with the resigned look you give a kid who’s about to unwrap a gorgeous present that’s going to turn out to be just socks. 

“I want this,” Enjolras insists. She’s sorry if she sounds snappish, but come on. “Now, lie down.”

Grantaire does.

Usually, Enjolras considers her hands fairly capable, but in this moment, tracing the enticing expanses of Grantaire’s inner thighs, they feel like clumsy animal paws. She wants to be good for Grantaire. She wants to be better than Grantaire can be for herself, and she harbors not a particle of doubt that Grantaire is very, very good for herself. As her hands slide toward the green trim of Grantaire’s underwear, Enjolras allows her head to follow.

Through the hazy exterior cling of smoke and turpentine, Grantaire’s own smell emerges, liquid and dangerous. She smells amazing. It’s all Enjolras can do not to nuzzle at her; then she realizes that’s kind of the whole idea. She leans closer till her nose is almost brushing the cotton that provides Grantaire’s last bit of modesty. She’s pleased to note the darker color of the fabric where it’s already damp between Grantaire’s legs.

Over the fabric, Enjolras’s tongue presses hard against Grantaire. She holds it there till she knows Grantaire can feel the heat and moisture of her mouth, till she can feel the heat and moisture of Grantaire. She brings her lips forward to enclose her tongue and, through the cloth, Grantaire’s clit. 

“No!” Grantaire gasps under her breath. “You can’t...”

“One word,” Enjolras murmurs into the tremulous warmth between Grantaire’s legs. R shuts up. Enjolras waits a moment anyway, just to be sure. “Now, let me.” And she sets in in earnest.

She licks and sucks greedily at the cloth, tasting the rich bitterness of Grantaire, teasing, coaxing, knowing exactly how the wet roughness will abrade. Grantaire’s gasps offer satisfactory indications of progress. Unless Enjolras is greatly mistaken, this won’t last long. 

Grantaire’s hands grip at the edges of the white mattress, and as if against her better advice, Grantaire shifts hard toward Enjolras, like she’s trying to grind herself into Enjolras’s face.

Much as she delights in the view of Grantaire’s knuckly hands convulsing in pleasure, Enjolras wants to feel them on her. “Hold my head,” she commands, and then melts as Grantaire’s hands slide into the unbound mass of her hair and drag across her scalp. 

Her mouth is on Grantaire, full of Grantaire, her taste, her scent, the firm hot  _ need _ of her, and now with Grantaire’s hands pulling her in, Enjolras tugs the sodden fabric aside and licks, unimpeded, the full length of Grantaire’s swollen folds. 

She groans, because Grantaire is amazing. 

Grantaire freezes. 

“You’re amazing,” Enjolras says, and it’s like the blood once more surges through Grantaire’s veins. “Let me feel you come.”

When she takes Grantaire’s clit directly  into her mouth, she knows it’s all over. All Grantaire’s hesitation has transmogrified into raw libido, her hands tangling in the waves of Enjolras’s hair—and who knew Enjolras would go crazy for these little jabs of pain across her scalp, the illusion of helplessness as Grantaire fucks against her? but she absolutely does; if she could take more of Grantaire into her, she would; as it is, she’s mashed so hard against her, her face buried between Grantaire’s legs in rough curls and tender skin and the taut, wet edges of her underwear—and when she comes, Grantaire’s fighting so hard not to explode that it’s like a tiny earthquake. The whole room vibrates around them, the tremors spreading from the epicenter of Enjolras’s tongue still drawing steadily back and forth across the smooth hard control of Grantaire’s pleasure.

She doesn’t move until Grantaire lets go of her hair; even then, her hands remain lightly on Enjolras’s head, so Enjolras only lifts her head a little, settling it in the hollow where Grantaire’s thigh meets the lower abdomen. She kisses the curving flesh of Grantaire’s belly. Something blooms there—opium poppies, she thinks, wondering if the line of heavy heads bobs all the way up R’s side, past the bunched-up hem of her tank top.

They don’t have much more time. “I saw that thing you did,” says Enjolras.

“It’s like you’re saying nothing.” Grantaire’s voice is so soft and drowsy as to be almost unrecognizable. 

“I saw your art show,” Enjolras clarifies. Below her head, Grantaire’s muscles go hard. “I saw it. I know. We are going to try this again.”

After a long, long pause, Grantaire finally says, “All right. Corinthe in two hours.”

*

Jehan’s not on. Without being asked, a generically pretty art student brings them both white wine and buzzes off.

“I’m here,” Grantaire says. She gestures rather helplessly at the crowded terrace around them. “I’m here again, against my better judgment, so you’d better have something to say.”

“I want you in my bed,” Enjolras blurts out. It’s not at all what she planned to lead with—she’s had two hours! she makes presentations basically every day! there is no reason to diverge from strategy like this!—but it’s what emerges, so she has to go with it. “I don’t know if we’ll get along at all, but I don’t care. I’m not an impulsive person. I’m methodical and diligent and fanatically devoted to a bunch of precepts that I have to methodically water down so people don’t think I’m insane. My dating has been practical and unfulfilling, but I’ve never felt much inclination for anything more. Not till the day you told me off in front of the spa and I, well ... I wanted you. 

“ And then I got to have you, sort of, and I thought maybe that was enough, but it’s absolutely not, Grantaire. You don’t believe me when I say I want you, do you? You think I’m just smitten with your hands, which, yes, is not untrue, but it’s also your snarkiness, your insight, your unwillingness to put up with my bullshit, and also—and I don’t want to say this, I really don’t, it’s the lowest of reasons, but I feel like I have to say it—and also how you  _ look _ , because you look like no one I’ve ever known and because looking at you makes me feel more or less how I feel when you touch me, which is to say explosive and alive and unlike any way I’ve felt before.”

Grantaire is staring hard into her wine.

“Will you look at me?”

Grantaire’s fingers twitch on the stem of the wine glass. It looks like she’s resolving something. “I’ll look at you in your bed. We’ll try it tonight. Tomorrow, we both decide if we’ll ever try again.”

“Deal.”

*

Enjolras has never been more grateful that Courfeyrac’s a social butterfly who seldom graces the apartment with his presence on a weekend night. She locks the front door—all the locks, so she’ll get a little warning if he does decide to show up—and turns to her houseguest, who is shuffling around looking at the vintage political posters that serve as wall decor in the living room.

“Can I get you something to eat?” she asks.

“No,” Grantaire says. “Thanks.” She looks deeply uncomfortable here—a disheveled, tattooed punk in the spare tidiness of Enjolras’s sitting room. “Look, I was wrong, I should go.”

“Can I kiss you?” asks Enjolras. She is desperate. She got Grantaire here, and she’s damned if she’s letting go so easily.

In answer, Grantaire sort of sags. Her shoulders fall back from their high, defensive posture to a more comfortable fuck-the-police sort of swagger. She shrugs. Enjolras will readily accept this as good enough.

To call Grantaire’s lips soft would be to misrepresent their intensity. It would not explain the moans that catch in Enjolras’s throat, nor the warmth in her groin; it would certainly not account for the way Enjolras’s hands have, unbeknownst to her, already slid up the warm skin of Grantaire’s back, already fumbling to find the fastening of Grantaire’s bra. And yet, Grantaire’s lips are soft—certainly the softest Enjolras has ever kissed, and possibly the softest thing she can imagine.

“Oh, fuck it all,” Grantaire groans when Enjolras has, in sweet victory, slipped the bra out from under her shirt and ducks to take one oblong nipple into her mouth. “Fuck, I think you said something about a bed?”

Grantaire naked is glorious. Every part of her curves, the firm and the soft together, strong and whole, all Enjolras can see. The flowers do grow up her side, and her back (from what little Enjolras can catch in the mirror, and she will definitely ask about this later if later is a thing) appears to contain an entire redwood forest, populated by tiny trolls and fairies and woodpeckers. She kisses her everywhere, on the sides and hips and anklebones and throat—a lot on the throat, Grantaire’s throat is magnetic and the sounds you can get her to make when you kiss there—until Grantaire’s losing her self-control and pulling off Enjolras’s clothes, too, and they’re naked together in bed, and being naked  _ against _ naked Grantaire is twice glorious. 

They wrap up in each other and kiss and grind, intertangled legs hard with satisfying muscle, and Enjolras is shy to admit the first time she comes until she figures out that this one gasping noise Grantaire’s made a couple times now is her own tiny suppressed orgasm. 

“I want to hear you,” Enjolras whispers then into Grantaire’s ear.

“Then you’re going to have to fuck me harder than that.”

She does, with fingers and just her leg for backup because she’s loath to reopen the possibility of distance that might emerge the moment her mouth loses contact with Grantaire’s, and regardless of the reason, it’s so worth it when Grantaire rears back, eyes wild and plummy lips seeking any point of contact, to shout wordless strings of incoherent sound as she clenches tight around every bit of Enjolras she can hold. 

When she’s reasonably sure she’s fucked Grantaire into complacency, Enjolras takes a chance on lying back and allowing Grantaire an unfettered go at her own body. It’s revelatory, like watching an expert jeweler pick up pliers and wire—everything she is bends into shape under Grantaire’s touch.

“You’re a sexual Midas,” she says, because when if not now? 

From somewhere near her tingling midsection, Grantaire chuckles. “Can I Midas your asshole?”

Enjolras can see no reason why not. 

This turns out to be very much the right call. Enjolras comes wriggling around several wet, strategically-positioned fingers while Grantaire, who, it turns out, will yell even when she’s just rubbing against a leg so long as you’re licking and pinching at her nipples at the same time, moans the exact same broken sounds that spill from Enjolras’s own lips. 

Around one a.m., they grudgingly admit that they should eat something. There’s leftover noodles in the fridge, and beer, and Enjolras stares and stares at the half-dressed force of nature leaning against her fridge and can’t imagine why she would ever sleep again.

“So, you’re a vegetarian,” Grantaire says, forking up a cold bite. It’s not a question.

“Plenty of progressives eat meat,” Enjolras says, just to be ornery.

“Yeah,” Grantaire slurps back a long noodle and wipes the sauce from her cheek. “But I’m not talking about ‘plenty of progressives.’ I’m talking about you, and you’re definitely a vegetarian. You're fucking delicious. Light and sweet.”

Grantaire holds her eye for a moment—long enough to see what Enjolras can feel, that the color is rising in her cheeks, because she has never eaten a meal with someone (even from a cold, oily take-out box) while discussing the flavor profile of her vaginal secretions—then relents, holding out the box.

Enjolras scoops up a couple of noodles and a snow pea. By the time she’s done chewing, her face has cooled. She doesn’t know if Grantaire’s trying to weird her out or if her post-sex conversations always include a fluids analysis, but, she is surprised to note, she absolutely does not care.  

“It’s tomorrow now,” Enjolras announces. 

“What?” 

“It’s tomorrow, and I’ve decided. I want to do this again.”

“ Oh.” Grantaire looks like she's struggling to meet her eye this time. She lifts a new beer, tilts it up, and drinks it entire. Clinking the empty bottle down on the kitchen counter, she shrugs, as if to say,  _ Your loss _ . “Okay. Me too.”

 

 


End file.
